Beer Baron

ok. GTG. 3 mins.......till I fall asleep!

ok, Had a big few days. Nismo Festival on Sunday. Nearly got mowed down by an R390 LM car as I was standing on the grid! Spent $500 at the Nismo stall. Bought a magnesium 19X13 inch TE37 off a Nismo GT500 car. Saw my new engine. didn't sleep much. So just a couple of pics before I crash. Since I was lucky enough to have a press accreditation I was able to access pit lane and all areas of the track etc. So I was able to be on the spot when the GT500 officially broke cover. It was pretty cool to be in probably the first 100 or so people to lay eye on it in the flesh outside of nissan/nismo employees. It is super impressive. Looks like a stealth bomber and sounds like it's letting of tactical nuclear strikes in it's engine! waiting with the rest of the press for it to emerge. here it comes! in the open for the first time. one or two nice pics before I pass out. Talk about a press frenzy! I will do a full write up and lots of pics in the next few days or so after I have some time. Tomorrow I am busy here in Kyushu, then fly back to Tokyo for drifting on wednesday and Tsukuba time attack on thursday. a very fully week!

ginza on a saturday afternoon. they close some of the streets and there is a LOT of people out and about

I'm not sure if it makes me a nerd, but I reckon tamiya fair would rock! I guess never growing up means I can still enjoy RC cars

ok just a couple of pics before I head out: new GTR, plenty of room for golf clubs apparently. colour chart as you can see it's still drawing a crowd! sexy rear end and it was a nice place to sit. even big bastards like me can fit in and be comfortable. interior is super high quality.

good day today. slept in after a big one last night. went to ginza and checked out the new GTR. very, very nice. massively impressed. did a bit of shopping around shinjuku too. now just need to head out tonight but try not to have a big one as nismo festival tomorrow. not many pics today but will upload some later.

For sure. The plan is: today going to ginza and check out the nissan showroom tomorrow nismo festival monday I fly to Kyushu monday and tuesday night in kyushu then fly back to tokyo on wednesday (staying in shibuya for the rest of the time) wednesday going to watch some drifting with a friend thursday tsukuba time attack friday and saturday no real plans yet sunday track day monday probably just relax tuesday head home. I'll send you a message and we can tee something up. are you going out to fuji tomorrow?

that looks like williamsF1`s car (ben I thinｋ his name was?). nice exhaust. not sure how good those mufflers are, but really the only way to quieten it is more muffler. thin wall stainless exhausts are also generally louder than an equivelant thicker wall mild steel system. but obviously one looks nice, the other doesn`t.

ok, back in tokyo as of last night. Had a quiet night as I was knackered after no sleep for the last few days. had ramen at my favourite ramen place and crashed. staying in a nice apartment this time. near my friends place that I usually stay at. it's on roppongi dori just 150meters from roppongi crossing. a couple of pics. it's pretty typical of tokyo apartments i've seen. view from the balcony. nice. living room/bedroom the provide high speed fibre optic net, and fax machine, cordless phone etc which is nice. Apartment controls. has the intercom, fire alarm switch etc. on the left is a controller for the hot water, including remote bath activation. typical mini size dishwasher! it's only about a foot wide if that. This is the view from the front balcony. My appartment is on the 11th floor (out of 12) and you can see how high up the freeways go. The street at the bottom is roppongi dori, then a freeway above that, then the other direction above it. Then they intersect with other freeways about 100 meters away. The roads here never cease to impress. on the left about 100 meters down is roppongi crossing.

I'll upload a few quick pics in the ol beer baron diary.

not much update. Got to tokyo last night. got to my hotel. realised it's kick ass. had a shower, walked up to my favourite ramen place in roppongi, had some shio ramen, tamago and gyoza and a nice frosty sapporo beer. strolled back to the hotel and practically passed out in bed for a solid 9 hr sleep. just about to head out for the day. some shopping to do.

well I just got to my place in Tokyo. going to have a shower then head out. See you soon Russ

you know saitama is a long way from f*kuoka right? this may be way he needs/wants the car moved to tokyo. saitama is a prefecture just adjacent to tokyo prefecture (on honshu). f*kuoka is way down south on kyushu (where kanda port is). it seems possible the japanese buyer (i assume he's your buyer?) has bought the car for you in kyushu (f*kuoka) but since he is way up in saitama maybe he can't easily arrange the car to be loaded in kyushu as perhaps he doesn't know anyone down there to do it?

there is something seriously wrong if you went from new rotors to worn out in 5 laps. did you measure rotor thickness before you fitted them (you should have)? what was it? what is it at now? even with seized calipers you would be hard pressed to go through a set of rotors in 5 laps.

ok well that makes more sense. if your mate in Japan is in tokyo, and he wants to load the container there then that's fair enough. it will still be better if he can just load the car as a non-runner in kyushu. where are you shipping it to in aus? maybe just ask him to try other avenues for freight to tokyo. 30,000 seems pretty cheap. I would say even 50,000 is reasonable? I'm guessing the guy in Kyushu is the guy you are buying the car from? or was he acting as your agent and bought the car for you from yahoo on your behalf?

and yes agreed I think perhaps the bloke wants to send to tokyo maybe to use kiwi? I guess if this guy is in QLD it's worth using kiwi, they charge 200USD extra for non-running cars. but again, if it costs you nearly $2000AUD just to get it to tokyo or osaka, then it's not worth it. better to figure out a solution where it is now.

found some pics on my work PC. I don't want to seem like I'm trying to argue just for the sake of it, but saying there is no roro out of kanda is just plain not true. The lovely port of Kanda, and cars being loaded onto a dedicated car and truck carrier (PCTC).

the last time I used kiwi (when they dicked me around for the last time) was when they changed their policy that they will not cover all inland transport from QLD anymore, and they only reimburse you up to a certain amount (that was 3 years ago, before that they did provide free in-land aus transport). also, having a car unloaded in QLD, then sit around for a while till it gets on a car carrier, then driven down to syndney or melbourne adds at least a week to the process. sure if you lived in QLD it may be a good idea, but I would never use kiwi again. I will always have my cars shipped direct to my closest port if at all possible. the less people handling the car the better. there haven't been any amazing changes to kanda. ro-ro has been going out of there for a fair while. why you would send cars from kyushu to osaka to ship doesn't make sense to me unless you were unable to get space on a vessel leaving kyushu.

lol, do you want me to post pictures of cars being driven onto ships in kanda? mate ro-ro has been coming out of kanda for a long time. I've seen it with my own two eyes!

yes, ro-ro is ro-ro if you know what I mean. they will happily load and unload non-running cars. some exotics are disabled on purpose so they can't be started etc by handlers and still sent ro-ro. lots of lines load at Kanda. I'm not sure if kiwi do, but I think they do. but anyway I wouldn't go anywhere near them. you will have to pay extra as the car has to be towed/lifted/pushed onto the vessel. just tell your dude to get the freakin schedule for mitsui, or Kline or NYK, find a vessel coming up soon, book some space on it, then get him to have the car towed to the wharf and they will take it from there. I just checked, kiwi don't go to kanda, but that is no great loss. anyway you hav missed their last boat of the year so if for some reason you do go with kiwi you car wont be leaving japan till january at the earliest, unless your buyer has already booked space on magic wave 17. this is mitsui's service: Service Frequency: 3-5 voyages / month Transit time from Japan last port to main calling ports TOWNSVILLE 11 DAYS BRISBANE 13 DAYS SYDNEY 15 DAYS MELBOURNE 17 DAYS ADELAIDE 19 DAYS Service Frequency: 1 voyage / month FREMANTLE 12 DAYS DARWIN 18 DAYS I don't really know anyone that would be keen to take on this task half way through and possibly have to deal with a buyer/exporter unwilling to assist. and it would probably cost you that 180,000 in the long run anyway.

I will offer one last piece of advice. of the carriers i have personally used kiwi was the worst (and since previous bad experiences I have voted with my feet and never used them again). I now use either mitsui,K line, or NYK. Since using those carriers I haven't had a problem (touch wood!).

I will say it again. there is plenty of ro-ro available in kyushu. I just sent a car from there about 8 days ago. do I need to post the bill of lading to prove I actually know what I'm talking about? why on earth would you truck a car up to Osaka to put it on a ship that probably then sail down to Kyushu to get more cars loaded before heading on to australia etc? I still can't figure out why everyone says: "send it to osaka" "send it to tokyo" "send it to hokkaido" "send it to manchuria" just send it to australia. from kyushu. where it is now.

no they are not. there is no 15 year rule in australia. to be imported freely cars must be manufactured in 1988 or earlier. so no, you can't import 15 year old cars without restriction any more.

not true. yes diameter is the only important thing. buy saying they all have 40 profile means they are ok is way off. the profile is a percentage of the width. so a 225/40/17 compared to a 265/40/17 give very different diameters. it too much hassle trying to keep staggered size tyres the same diameter for a GTR. hence the reason no body does it.

funky you don't want dexron 3 in the attesa system either. you want nissan matic d in there, dexron 3 in the transfer case, and manual gear oil in the gearbox (oh, but I don't think that has anything to do with your problem. regular ATF and nissan matic D are pretty much the same thing anyway). I would possibly try changing to a better GB oil. We all know friction causes heat and low qual oil allows more friction.